On Leaders, Leading, and Leadership: The How and Why

LEADER – a person, not a title
LEADING – a verb, the actions taken by that person who aspires to lead
LEADERSHIP – the effective result, or overall persuasion of consistency in intentional leading [see Ka lā hiki ola and Leadership: A Sense of Hope.]

There is a ton written about leadership, and most of what can be found online as free content is pretty bad. I’ve gotten to the point where I ignore all book titles and online link-teasers (with ‘leadership’ not more than a keyword for search engines), and will only bother reading the essays penned by writers I already know and admire, or because of someone’s strong recommendation for me.

… and The How.

He continues with six suggestions that he believes can change our acts of LEADING, if we’re up for the challenge, describing them as recurring choices we’ll have:

Obey — or revolt?

Conform — or rebel?

Value — or values?

Vision — or truth?

Archery — or architecture?

love — or Love.

I too, recommend you read the article in full. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

Now, you.

Haque wrote his essay as a call to action (he previously framed the problem he wants to solve here: The Great Dereliction.)

I share it with you mostly because I like that he thought so deeply about the subject, and came to an actionable game plan — he is next-stepping. What he suggests focuses squarely on LEADING so your actions will turn you into the LEADER you want to be, and are convicted about being: You will act as you believe will be PONO for you.

At their essence, both MANAGING and LEADING are about constantly making situational choices. Opportunities will present themselves on a daily basis.

It’s often said that leaders “inspire”. But that’s only half the story. Leaders inspire us because they bring out the best in us. They evoke in us our fuller, better, truer, nobler selves. And that is why we love them — not merely because they paint portraits of a better lives, but because they impel us to be the creators of our own.

I give you the same encouragement: I don’t think you can be a LEADER until you are, as Haque phrases it, ‘the creator of your own better life.’ This is what we call the value of ‘IMI OLA.

But you can’t just say what you aspire to, and stop there. Your making-it-happen actions have to create the LEADER in you.

Do for you, then do for others, and you will be managing your life with ALOHA.

Postscript:
One of the questions I frequently get, is why I named my business Say Leadership Coaching instead of Say Management Coaching: I admit to being more manager than leader, and elevating management is such a large part of all we do.

Being a better leader has always been my goal, and at that moment of time when SLC was founded (2004), I’d felt this “I’m now managing with Aloha” sense of arrival as a currently-working sensibility to what I already did — it was a managing victory for me, and leading better had to be next. The SLC laboratory of experimentation, future partnerships, and new learning had to aspire to leadership, because it was the challenge ahead of us. As foundation, SLC’s baseline assumption was that great management must consistently be our line drawn in the sand; our Calling to Management would always be non-negotiable. The SLC name therefore, was a brass ring I could keep my sights on, never forgetting my next vision, and never neglecting to reach for it.

Will I ever write a book called Leading with Aloha is often the next question in the conversation. Perhaps, as in ‘never say never,’ but likely not, because in my complete framing of that phrase I’d require a larger organizational forum than exists in my desired business model for SLC; I’d want a return to ‘big business’ and the ability to foster that leadership pipeline Noel M. Tichy referred to as The Leadership Engine. Meanwhile, I’ll often draft my thoughts about leadership here, on this blog, and I consider my laboratory of experimentation to still be an in-progress exploration. That same ‘sense of arrival’ may still elude me, but I’ve learned to be more patient about it, enjoying the learning, and applying it in other ways.

As is the point of this post: Define what you are aiming for, then do it.

Comments

Leadership never has a sense of arrival, it is elusive like the unreachable horizon, but yet it provides horizons. Umair Haque is representative today of a very small crack in the societal veneer of freedom. It is veneer because it is in actuality a thin layer of freedom, under which one will find lots of stuff that has been broomed under the carpet.

Whether the social veneer of yesterday falls away remains to be seen, but there is at least a crack in this societal cover up. Even if a powerful force wants to keep the wool over our collective eyes, the more information accumulates – the more we get to think about absolute fundamentals – one of which is what Haque mentions – the Big L of Love.

It is the vital mind, the exploring mind, the questioning mind that is the Big L and the core essential of leadership in this is, that leadership is at its most real when it imparts life. Leadership is life giving and thus the Big L of Love can no longer be seen as something set apart from what Leadership is.

The reason we have not seen this form of leadership is not because it is not in existence, the reason we have not seen this form is because we have not looked – and that looking isn’t towards the great in the world of work but the great in the world of home.

A great mother has imparted this leadership to produce great leaders – it is not jest that this has accumulated into phrases such as “behind every great man is a great woman” – these phrases only touch the surface of this leadership. Every great mother understands this sense of leadership and every leader so nurtured has gone onto be a great leader.

Yet we pay no stock to this tending, to this forming, to this grandest and greatest Labour of Love. We don’t pay stock to it because the leader is viewed as something G-d like, something more than human – but this is the idolatry of leadership – not its natural form.

The natural form of leadership is living, it is natural, it is the most human form of our humanity – and that is why we may end up worship it – simply because it has been a controlled resource, rather than a liberation.

A liberation of leadership contains no fear of the word Love – but it also acknowledges the unsung hero’s of centuries – especially centuries placed under an industrial age canopy. All darkness falls away when the light breaks through and leadership is no different – dark leadership equates with the dark industrial ages (an ancestry we have not yet broken free from) – but Light leadership – well think about it, what is the one light that has kept us most human – but Love.

Let’s celebrate the unsung heroes called Great Mothers and then celebrate a future where we sing for every life-giving force in our world. When leadership becomes that life-giving force – we have arrived at a golden age, brighter than any that human kind has ever witnessed. It is both in our collective reach and it can also so easily be brushed under the carpet – except in our century, we really do hold the keys to cleaning the future. Remove the darkness, and make room for the light.

Leadership is a life force and we cannot become great leaders until we have nurtured that within us, as well as share that nurture, so that others may live in greatness too.

I do think this leadership borne within love exists — and thrives, but more on an individual basis than on an organizational one. Thus our efforts here, to make it happen, within the love we define as Aloha to more readily share it.

Then such is the depth that Aloha is (and unfortunately watered down by many into a stereotypical greeting) is the province of wisdom, always available to us yet which few explore or even think about.

For me words are just a beginning, but an essential beginning because whether it is organizational or individual – what is born is far different to what can be made and such an excellence is something that embodies much, Aloha then is a becoming allowing that which isn’t Aloha to fall away naturally.

I spent this evening finding out (both from your writing and others what Aloha means to Hawaiians who are an embodiment of their way. In this it is music rather than words which allowed me to contemplate (or at least to touch rather than fathom) the way of Aloha.

Having heard the Aloha in the song, as if every Hawaiian ancestor was also there and the music presented me the gift to partake and embrace the Aloha you speak of and I must say the resulting experience was uplifting and what it uplifted was the awareness that there is a great way to live one’s life – if we are prepared to yield that which by itself is going to fall away.

Thank you Rosa for sharing this Hawaiian spirit, which also expresses itself in other cultures but which is also a reminder of its reality and then an intriguing personal choice.

I love this Mark: “Aloha then is a becoming allowing that which isn’t Aloha to fall away naturally.” That is exactly what I see happen!

I’m one who is exceedingly grateful for words, for vocabulary, for language and lexicon: When people ask me how to start practicing Managing with Aloha, I urge them to speak with Aloha — to get a language of intention into how they communicate as managers. I daresay you experienced it within the music you shared too, as another expression of what words and language labeling (such as Aloha, and other value names) can convey for us.